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When developing your mobile tour, there are many ways to make it particularly memorable for your visitors. One is choosing to incorporate audio into the tour in the form of a tour guide or narrator.

There are many options for narrating a tour, from a single, anonymous voice to a celebrity to a collection of different voices. At TourSphere, we’ve seen many tours come up with inventive takes on the narrator. Here are some things to consider as you decide who will be the voice of your app and, by extension, your museum, tourist destination or other site.

Who Might Be the Ideal Guide? For every location, there’s a potential protagonist, and that character–fictionalized or real–can act as your narrator. Developing a tour for a natural history museum? Dream up an archeologist and hand her the keys to the tour. In Miami: An Insider’s Walking Tour, South Beach native, bikini model and bartender Claudia guides the user through the city–the perfect authority for one of the country’s hottest destinations.

What Local Celebrities Can You Tap? Boston’s HarborWalk App features an introduction by the city’s mayor, Tom Menino. His distinctive voice and local celebrity status add gravitas and entertainment alike to the app, and his heavy Boston accent provides just the right amount of local flair.

Who’s an Insider? Who knows every corner of your tour? Who has insider information that visitors wouldn’t uncover by asking staff or reading signage? That’s the perfect person for narration (and you should be tapping them for content too!). The Mount Auburn Tour provides a specific “Dave Barnett’s Mount Auburn,” which features narration of the cemetery’s special features through the eyes of its president and CEO.

Can You Tap Your Board? You may have hidden talent right on your board–the perfect source for professional, insider’s, and pro bono narration. Consider the tour of the Boston Public Garden, narrated by Henry Lee, a longtime Bostonian and President of the Friends of the Public Garden–a perfect example of an insider who can add style and flair to your tour.

Are Multiple Narrators Better? Some tours are better told by a variety of voices. If you’ve got great stories to tell, consider weaving together a variety of voices to create a tour with more depth and dimension. Whether through reenactment or interviews with relevant people, this option can draw in your listener in a personal way.

Do You Have Hidden Talent? The most popular option for our museum and nonprofit clients involves finding employees, volunteers or other stakeholders at the organization who have acting or voiceover experience and tapping them as the “anonymous” narrator voice. This option provides a polished presence at a minimal cost.

Before you begin developing your app within TourSphere, decide whether you want your narrator to be a celebrity, organization insider, anonymous voice or combination of styles. Consider creating a presence for the narrator within the app and introducing them to the user with visuals and a bio, whether real or imagined. Use the narration to further draw users into your tour and make them feel like insiders.

Need inspiration? Here are some of the notable narrators that have appeared in TourSphere tours:

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With a wide range of services including a DIY app builder, web and native iOS and Android apps, audio guides, content production, onsite devices, mobile scavenger hunts and games, and location-aware beacons, OnCell allows you to harness the power of mobile technology.

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